It’s the Italian Open ATP 1000 men’s final
in beautiful Italy.
An exiting prospect as Roger Federer faced Nadal again.

Fresh off winning in Madrid, Nadal’s continued dominating with
tennis as beautiful as the pine trees and statues silhouetted against the warm
blue sky of a packed stadium.

Playing against his arch rival and world
number 2 Roger Federer, Nadal once again showed why he has earned the right to
be called the “King of Clay. His quick 6-1, 6-2 win in 1 hour, 9 minutes
extended his winning recorded to 15 of his last 17 matches on clay since returning
from a 7 month injury break.

It was crushing, dominating tennis. He had Federer scrambling from corner to
corner like Berdych in the semi- finals a day earlier. Federer tried everything
to counter Nadal’s relentless pressure and winners, but in doing so ended up
hitting 4 times more unforced errors than Nadal, currently ranked 3 spots below
him in the world rankings.

Nadal on the other hand dug his heels into
his favourite surface and continued pounding the corners and hitting deadly
accurate passing shots leaving Federer stranded at the net wondering what he
did wrong. Nadal looked the winner from the first 3 games of the first set and
never really looked back. It was a storming clay court performance and the
match to watch for any players aspirating to make clay courts their favourite
surface.

Federer will be relishing returning to his
favourite hunting ground Wimbledon followed by another hard and indoor court
season leading up to the World Championship finals in London.

I get a feeling he is happy letting the
next generation take the lead in redefining the game as he did when he burst on
the scene. But he still has the fire to make their work as difficult as
possible while enjoying the game as much as he can.

After 2 sublime clay court finals, Nadal
goes into the French Open in 2 weeks clearly the favourite.